Cheshire trust 'requires improvement'

PERFORMANCE: The Care Quality Commission has told East Cheshire Trust it ‘requires improvement’, following an inspection.

The regulator’s report included major concerns about the trust’s adult community services, which were rated “inadequate” due to staff shortages and management issues.

Several areas of the trust’s services were rated ‘good’ by the CQC

Some community nurses told the inspection team they did not always report incidents because of time restraints, while most staff within the service did not know who the nursing director.

The CQC said an action plan was in place for recruiting more community nurses but there was “limited evidence of progress”.

However, several areas of the trust were rated “good”, including urgent and emergency services, critical care, community dental services and community health inpatient services.

Sir Mike Richards, CQC chief inspector of hospitals, said the trust’s staff were “working hard delivering compassionate care to people using trust services”.

However, he added: “We saw that work was needed to improve the leadership and governance at the trust. The trust’s vision and strategy was not always clear and the visibility of the executive team was variable, with a noticeable disconnect between the trust board and staff providing some community services.”

Overall the trust was rated “good” for how caring its services were, but “requires improvement” for safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership.

East Cheshire chief executive John Wilbraham said: “The report offers opportunities for the trust to improve further and we are confident staff will respond positively to these, and indeed we have already made changes since the inspection last December.”

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